loud as the first introduction, “he’s my son.” Could you, having any bowels of compassion, extort a like confession from such an unprotected female as Miss Debora? A registration commission might, if encouraged, hereafter ransack her unfortunate boxes to find baby-linen. Is there to be nothing but one rigid rule—no charity shown to sex and age—but the unsparing discovery of both on that fatal 30th of March? Must no female, then, escape to her lover’s arms in male attire—no “lubberly boy” pass for a sweet Anne Page, that sweet Anne Page fall not to the lot of a fool? Must foibles, frailties, and follies be all registered in damnatory schedules? Surely there might be a little decent connivance, such as would spare the two village ladies, who, being born in the same _anno Domini_, annually visited each other to determine what should be their ages for the ensuing year. Their only comfort will be in bribery and corruption, which they will be thankful is not yet put down, and a fee will spare what uncharitable census would expose. There may be something in attacking crimes and discovering frauds which touch the whole community. These are not much harboured in homes, but in public-houses, and in shops, which are not homes, but as having a public character, and giving public invitation to all to enter them, ought to come under some kind of surveillance; but when the citizen shuts his street-door, let none force an entrance. Let no Asmodeus take off his roof, and publish the within little histories, nor make gimlet-holes in walls and ceilings. Such doings are but, as at present, a slight exaggeration or caricature of a census. Let there be a police, and a good one; even with much secret scrutiny allowed them,—it is for the public safety; but there let it end in its admitted authority. Make not a police of a census commission, nor let the one interfere with or usurp the office of the other. Let a census be content to number the people—a police take crime under its cognisance. The undying, ever-seeing, and acting arrangement of a police is one of the most curious phenomena of society. For revolutions that appear to overturn everything, scarcely touch a well-ordered police; the excellence of which is, that it lives and moves unseen, unfelt, by the good—that it is a protector.